Velodyne ULD 15 repair

They made the sub until 1997 at a price of 2000.00 new.
If anything they should have offered upgrades to improve the ULD, not abandon the product and the many people who own them at this point.
As I see it they have started selling their subs in Circuit City and Tweeter. Not exactly what I would call high end.
If I remember, the old Carver corp when down this same road. The only differance is Carver still supports the old product line. Also, I never owned any Carver equipment.

The way I see it the ULD was and still is a fine sub. The servo control system was a major inovation in 1985 when it was introduced. It continued to be one of if not the best sub avail for many years. But face facts. It is a 20 year old design, that once was high-tech.

It's a great unit. If you have one and it works, enjoy! If it doesn't work and you can get it fixed at a reasonable cost, do it. But, everything I read and hear leads me to believe that their new DD series is a significant improvement over the ULD. So if you have a ULD that doesn't work and you can't get it fixed cheaply, what could be better than a DD-15 for about $1200. By the way, when Velodyne was last repairing the ULD's they charged between $650 & 800 to replace the driver and tweek the amp. IMHO the DD series is worth the difference in cost.

I had a Foundation series sub for 5 years that I sent to Velodyne for repair about a year ago. All I sent was the board and they also upgraded the chips to their latest iteration. It was relatively inexpensive($150 or so), the repair was done promptly and the service was exemplary. I can't recommend them highly enough.

It was partly based upon their continued excellent service that prompted me to purchase a DD-15, their best 15" sub to date, IMHO. I remain very happy. They continue to be one of the best, if not the best subwoofer companies in the world.

They have always been very helpful the few times I have had to call them over the past 25 years, and even their current offer as described above by chiefwej indicates the caliber of company they are. To gratuitously slam them over an isolated experience just because they don't act as YOU might wish them to act is ridiculous. They have consistently gone above and beyond my sevice expectations and their products' longevity and awards speak for themselves. No, I'm not connected to Velodyne in any way - just thought I'd lend my 2 cents to the discussion so that some newbie wouldn't get the wrong idea about Velodyne.

I think everyone is missing the point. I like my ULD 15's and I'm very much interested in keeping them if I can find someone experienced in serviceing them. I have the ULD's modified at a very low x-over frequency. This allows me to control the deep bass without changing the sound of my bi-amped full range speakers. The ULD's have great deep bass control down to 18hz. Very few subs can do that in a two channel system.

What exact problems are they having?

If the foam is shot, you could try contacting Madisound, or even the guys who specialize in speaker surrounds on Ebay, and see if they have any leads on the size you need. The relevant dimensions are the overall diameter (15" I assume), and the diameter of the foam "roll" - probably about 1"?.

The most common amplifier problem with these is overheated/shorted output transistors. The symptom of that is the fuse blows instantly when you turn the amp on - whether or not it's connected to the sub. Any electronic repair shop should be able to replace them, but it won't be all that cheap as it's a somewhat involved job.

The servo circuits can be fried easily if the servo cable is removed while the sub is playing - a serious design flaw. If that is the case, you may be out of luck.

That's about all I know. Keep in mind if the driver itself is fine, you can run these as "normal" subs with any powerful amplifier - you won't have the servo control, but it should sound as good as a similar non-servo unit.